Quotes about first
page 33

“On-line service providers and others have a key role to play in freeing cyberspace of the taint of copyright lawlessness. Accountability for copyright violations committed by users is as essential for advancing this indispensable goal.
Who is responsible if a valuable copyrighted work is downloaded from a provider, and then copied on a digital video machine from which thousands of copies can be made, the last copy as pure and pristine as the first? And if no one can be held responsible, then who and what is to prevent the flood that will surely follow? This is a loophole larger than a parade of eight-wheelers through which a dam-busting avalanche of violations can rupture the purpose of your bill every day.”

Jack Valenti (1921–2007) President of the MPAA

Testimony to the U.S. House of Representatives on copyright immunities for ISPs. (7 February 1996) http://www.judiciary.house.gov/legacy/461.htm

“Her point of view about student work was that of a social worker teaching finger-painting to children or the insane.
I was impressed with how common such an attitude was at Benton: the faculty—insofar as they were real Benton faculty, and not just nomadic barbarians—reasoned with the students, “appreciated their point of view”, used Socratic methods on them, made allowances for them, kept looking into the oven to see if they were done; but there was one allowance they never under any circumstances made—that the students might be right about something, and they wrong. Education, to them, was a psychiatric process: the sign under which they conquered had embroidered at the bottom, in small letters, Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased?—and half of them gave it its Babu paraphrase of Can you wait upon a lunatic? One expected them to refer to former students as psychonanalysts do: “Oh, she’s an old analysand of mine.” They felt that the mind was a delicate plant which, carefully nurtured, judiciously left alone, must inevitably adopt for itself even the slightest of their own beliefs.
One Benton student, a girl noted for her beadth of reading and absence of coöperation, described things in a queer, exaggerated, plausible way. According to her, a professor at an ordinary school tells you “what’s so”, you admit that it is on examination, and what you really believe or come to believe has “that obscurity which is the privilege of young things”. But at Benton, where education was as democratic as in “that book about America by that French writer—de, de—you know the one I mean”; she meant de Tocqueville; there at Benton they wanted you really to believe everything they did, especially if they hadn’t told you what it was. You gave them the facts, the opinions of authorities, what you hoped was their own opinion; but they replied, “That’s not the point. What do you yourself really believe?” If it wasn’t what your professors believed, you and they could go on searching for your real belief forever—unless you stumbled at last upon that primal scene which is, by definition, at the root of anything….
When she said primal scene there was so much youth and knowledge in her face, so much of our first joy in created things, that I could not think of Benton for thinking of life. I suppose she was right: it is as hard to satisfy our elders’ demands of Independence as of Dependence. Harder: how much more complicated and indefinite a rationalization the first usually is!—and in both cases, it is their demands that must be satisfied, not our own. The faculty of Benton had for their students great expectations, and the students shook, sometimes gave, beneath the weight of them. If the intellectual demands were not so great as they might have been, the emotional demands made up for it. Many a girl, about to deliver to one of her teachers a final report on a year’s not-quite-completed project, had wanted to cry out like a child, “Whip me, whip me, Mother, just don’t be Reasonable!””

Randall Jarrell book Pictures from an Institution

Source: Pictures from an Institution (1954) [novel], Chapter 3, pp. 81–83

Life, Children, Books, Youth

“A critical sense of style and of poetic form is not easy to attain, nor is it of first importance for the younger, or, indeed, for any student of Virgil. Wide open to anyone who is willing to learn is the richer knowledge of Virgil as a poet who loved his country and who loved also that humanity which existed before Rome, exists today within ourselves, and will exist long after our own civilization, like that of Virgil's Rome, has become a matter of "ancient history." It is true that the longer one has lived the better one can appreciate a poem which is concerned with life. But the gain that comes to us with the years depends, partly at least, upon the riches we have been willing to extract from literature, which is the experience of other men and women written out. In youth's search for this treasure the Aeneid will be at once a fair haven and a port of departure.”

John Conington (1825–1869) British classical scholar

Introduction to The Aeneid of Virgil (Chicago and New York: Scott Foresman and Company, 1916), p. 45; partially quoted in School and Home Education, Vol. 35 (1916), p. 172

Love, Life, Women, Men

“Poets serious about making careers in institutions understand that the criteria for success are primarily quantitative. They must publish as much as possible as quickly as possible. The slow maturation of genuine creativity looks like laziness to a committee. Wallace Stevens was forty-three when his first book appeared. Robert Frost was thirty-nine. Today these sluggards would be unemployable.”

Dana Gioia (1950) American writer

Essays, Can Poetry Matter? (1991)

Books, Understanding, Appearance, Success

“Every great scientific truth goes through three stages. First, people say it conflicts with the Bible. Next they say it has been discovered before. Lastly they say they always believed it.”

Louis Agassiz (1807–1873) Swiss naturalist

As quoted in A Dictionary of Scientific Quotations (1991) edited by Alan L. Mackay, ( p. 2 http://books.google.com/books?id=KwESE88CGa8C&pg=PA2&lpg=PA2&dq=every+scientific+truth+goes+through+three+stages+first+people+say+it+conflicts+with+the+bible+next+they+say+it+had+been+discovered+before+lastly+they+say+they+always+believed+in+it&source=web&ots=DKSjGVklFG&sig=TGpJ6LSI9CE4s7Nu8wUiGAq3rgI)

People, Truth

“First one should write no more or no less letters than the sound of the word requires. Second, one should write as one speaks and not try to pay attention to the style of other writers, particularly academicians.”

Quirinus Kuhlmann (1651–1689) German poet and mystic

Preface to Lehrreicher Geschicht-Herold
Other Quotes

“When I was in hospital I found I could hardly read or writ. In these circumstances I began to write poems. I found that poetry was the only kind of writing in which I could express my thoughts. One night I dreamed I was lying on the bank of a canal, under machine gun fire. The next morning I wrote it out, Carentan O Caretan, and as I wrote I realized it was not a dream, but the memory of my first time under fire”

Louis Simpson (1923–2012) Jamaican poet

The Poetry of War 1939-45 ed. Ian Hamilton, London 1965
Carentan O Carentan, 1948

Dreams, Lying, Memory, Time

“Remember that government doesn't earn one single dollar it spends. In order for you to get money from the government, that money must first be taken from somebody else.”

Jesse Ventura (1951) American politician and former professional wrestler

I Ain't Got Time To Bleed (1999)

Money

“This led me to extend my inquiry into the origin of all religions, and this again led to an enquiry into the origin of nations and languages; and ultimately I came to a resolution to devote six hours a day to this pursuit for ten years. Instead of six hours daily for ten years, I believe I have, upon the average, applied myself to it for nearly ten hours daily for almost twenty years. In the first ten years of my search I may fairly say, I found nothing which I sought for; in the latter part of the twenty, the quantity of matter has so crowded in upon me, that I scarcely know how to dispose of it.”

Godfrey Higgins (1772–1833) British archaeologist

Undated letter at Godfrey Higgins http://burghwallis.com/village/articles/higgins.htm biography.

Religion, Search, Parting

“Our autopilot was taking us into a very large crater, about the size of a big football stadium with steep slopes on the crater covered with very large rocks about the size of automobiles that was not the kind of place that I wanted to try to make the first landing.”

Neil Armstrong (1930–2012) American astronaut; first person to walk on the moon

60 Minutes interview (2005)

Football

“The theory of games was first formalised by Von Neumann & Morgenstern (1953) in reference to human economic behaviour. Since that time, the theory has undergone extensive development… Sensibly enough, a central assumption of classical game theory is that the players will behave rationally, and according to some criterion of self-interest. Such an assumption would clearly be out of place in an evolutionary context. Instead, the criterion of rationality is replaced by that of population dynamics and stability, and the criterion of self-interest by Darwinian fitness.”

John Maynard Smith book Evolution and the Theory of Games

Source: Evolution and the Theory of Games (1973), p. 1-2.

Game, Time

“She shouted, “Arms and tongues, Spiral?” and waggled her arms and stuck out her tongue, and the old man crowed and did the same. “He’s for the first, against the second, as I recall,” she said to Ori. “Has he chanted for you? ‘Too much yammer, not enough hammer.’””

China Miéville book Iron Council

Part 2 “Returns”, chapter 8 (p. 85)
Iron Council (2004)

“He had said from the first that the war had been a hideous blunder, and he had supported that opinion in the House of Commons. (Cheers.) … Stop the farm-burning; it had been a great mistake and was against British ideas. (Cheers.) Recognize that they were dealing with men whose bravery and tenacity they could admire, and offer terms to the representatives of the two Republics and to the burghers who were now in arms.”

James Bryce, 1st Viscount Bryce (1838–1922) British academic, jurist, historian and Liberal politician

Speech in the public baths of Caledonian Road, Islington, London (12 December 1900) against the Boer War, quoted in The Times (13 December 1900), p. 10.
1900s

Men, War, Idea, Support

“I realize that for many New Yorkers, this is the first time you've heard my name, and you don't know much about me. Over these next two years you will get to know me, but more importantly, I will get to know you.”

Kirsten Gillibrand (1966) United States Senator from New York

At the press conference where New York Governor David Paterson announced Gillibrand's appointment to the senate
[N.Y. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Pickert, Kate, Time, Inc., Time, 2009-01-23, 2011-01-28, http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1873589,00.html]

Time

“Prophecy is first and foremost a self-serving gift.”

Lawrence M. Schoen (1959) American writer and klingonist

Source: Barsk: The Elephants' Graveyard (2015), Chapter 38, “Loose Ends” (p. 354)

“The world is changing dramatically and architecture, and especially cities, need to move with these changes. What can we do to help as architects? Architecture as a way of thinking — as the title of our first exhibition in 1989 suggested — is more relevant than ever.”

Jacques Herzog (1950) Swiss architect

places.designobserver.com http://places.designobserver.com/feature/an-interview-with-jacques-herzog/32118/.

World, Way, Thinking, Change

“There comes Emerson first, whose rich words, every one,
Are like gold nails in temples to hang trophies on;
Whose prose is grand verse while his verse the Lord knows
Is some of it pr— No, 't is not even prose!”

James Russell Lowell A Fable for Critics

Pt. I - Emerson, st. 1
A Fable for Critics (1848)

“Does the sweet morning rise,
Bride-like, from sleep,
When their first revelries
Bird and bee keep,
Singing out joyously
In the green tree?
Then, when my hopes are high,
Think I of thee.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

(5th January 1833) Songs
The London Literary Gazette, 1833-1835

Hope, Bird, Thinking, Sleep

“Spread along the platform was a mass of bobbing black hair like a long wave of silk. Suddenly I felt the first stirrings of what I would later come to recognize as kinship, a feeling that alarmed me, a sense that I was of a piece with a group of people for the most basic reasons, simple to the senses and irrational. They all looked like me.”

Zia Haider Rahman British novelist

In The Light of what We Know (2014)

People, Feeling, Sense

“This, then, is the gain of the Good Fight in this war, first, that the nation has attained a living consciousness of its inevitable unity, second, that it has proved its enormous power, and third, that in the terrible struggle it has used that united power for, and not against, equal rights. And the spirit of caste which it has disabled it will now utterly destroy. For the Good Fight is not a crusade against a section or a State, but against caste everywhere in the country. This is now entrenched in the bitter prejudice against the colored race, which is as inhuman and unmanly as the old hatred and contempt of Christendom for the Jews. Lifting their heads from bloody defeat in the field, the wan and wasted States of the South say in terms caste must be maintained, and by every kind of vagrant law and hostile legislation they will try to maintain it.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1860s, The Good Fight (1865)

Hostility, War, Law, Color

“My songs were once of the sunrise:
They shouted it over the bar;
First-footing the dawns, they flourished,
And flamed with the morning star.

My songs are now of the sunset:
Their brows are touched with light,
But their feet are lost in the shadows
And wet with the dews of night.”

William Ernest Henley (1849–1903) English poet, critic and editor

"Envoy"
Poems (1898)

Star, Light, Night

“And in this, that philosophy begins in wonder [Plato, Theaetetus 155d], lies the, so to speak, non-bourgeois character of philosophy; for to feel astonishment and wonder is something non-bourgeois (if we can be allowed, for a moment, to use this all-too-easy terminology). For what does it mean to become bourgeois in the intellectual sense? More than anything else, it means that someone takes one's immediate surroundings (the world determined by the immediate purposes of life) so "tightly" and "densely," as if bearing an ultimate value, that the things of experience no longer become transparent. The greater, deeper, more real, and (at first) invisible world of essences is no longer even suspected to exist; the "wonder" is no longer there, it has no place to come from; the human being can no longer feel wonder. The commonplace mind, rendered deaf-mute, finds everything self-explanatory. But what really is self-explanatory? Is it self-explanatory, then, that we exist? Is it self-explanatory that there is such a thing as "seeing"? These are questions that someone who is locked into the daily world cannot ask; and that is so because such a person has not succeeded, as anyone whose senses (like a deaf person) are simply not functioning — has not managed even for once to forget the immediate needs of life, whereas the one who experiences wonder is one who, astounded by the deeper aspect of the world, cannot hear the immediate demands of life — if even for a moment, that moment when he gazes on the astounding vision of the world.”

Josef Pieper (1904–1997) German philosopher

Source: Leisure, the Basis of Culture (1948), The Philosophical Act, pp. 101–102

Life, World, Feeling, Question

“We all become great explorers during our first few days in a new city, or a new love affair.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Unclassified

Love

“Some students at BYU perceive general education as an unfortunate burden that does little for them professionally. I was rudely awakened to this perception the first time that I taught Biology 100. Having loved biology my entire life, I assumed that all 250 students in my class would be as enthusiastic as I was to study biology. I quickly learned that most of my students dreaded having to take the course and had little interest in the sciences. My challenge was to help them learn to reverently admire the intricate wonders of God's creation that are evident when we study life. General education is especially important at BYU, for here a thoughtful study of the arts and sciences can be, in President Kimball's words, "bathed in the light and color of the restored gospel."”

Daniel J. Fairbanks (1956) American artist

Let me share with you a few of my own experiences.
The quoted line is taken from "Education for Eternity" (12 Septemebr 1967), by Spencer W. Kimball, p. 11, preschool address to BYU faculty and staff.
The Arts, the Sciences, and the Light of the Gospel (2000)

Love, Life, God, Education

“The first thoughts of an Englishman on appointment to the office of Foreign Secretary must be that he speaks in the name, not of Great Britain only, but of the British Dominions beyond the seas, and that it is his imperative duty to preserve in word and act the diplomatic unity of the British Empire. Our interests are one. Our intercourse must be intimate and constant, and we must speak with one voice in the Councils of the world.”

Austen Chamberlain (1863–1937) British politician

1924. Quoted in H. Blair Neatby, William Lyon Mackenzie King (Methuen, 1963), p. 40.
1920s

World, Sea

“Disciple: Lord, what is true detachment?
Truth: Take note with careful discrimination of these two words: oneself and leave. If you know how to weigh these two words properly, testing their meaning thoroughly to their core and viewing them with true discernment, then you can quickly grasp the truth.
Take, first of all, the first word -- oneself or myself -- and see what it is. It is important to realize that everyone has five kinds of self. The first self we have in common with a stone, and this is being. The second we share with plants, and this is growing. The third self we share with animals, and this is sensation. The fourth we share with all other human beings: we possess a common human nature in which all are one. The fifth - which belongs to a person exclusively as his or her own - is one's individual human self…
Now what is it that leads people astray and robs them of happiness? It is exclusively this last self. Because of it a person turns outward, away from God and toward this self, when he or she should be returning inward. Thus they fashion their own selves according to what is accidental. In their blindness they appropriate to themselves what is God's. This is the direction they take, and they eventually sink into sinfulness.”

Henry Suso (1295–1366) Dominican friar and mystic

The Exemplar, The Little Book of Truth

God, Happiness, People, Truth

“Having the chance to watch … Meet Your Meat, it was probably one of the first punches. Once I made that connection between loving an animal and eating an animal is when things clicked in my brain. Latinos have this obsession with everything fried, with a lot of animal protein, and, yeah, it’s true—we have a lot of problems with obesity, we have a lot of problems with diabetes, we have a lot of problems with asthma. We have a lot of problems with a lot of things that come from it. And I couldn't believe that to create a toothpaste, or to create a shampoo, there are a lot of animals that have to suffer for that. As you become a vegan, you start learning that everything in your life has to become cruelty free.”

Natalia Villaveces (1979) Colombian television host

"Natalia Villaveces' Exclusive PETA Interview", video on PETA's YouTube channel (12 July 2011) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SX2alBCT70s.

Love, Life, Problem, Suffering

“The beautiful Monique insists on joining their expedition and cannot be dissuaded; we think at first she has a nefarious motive, but no, she's probably taken a class in screenplay construction and knows that the film requires a sexy female lead. This could be the first case in cinematic history of a character voluntarily entering a movie because of the objective fact that she is required.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/around-the-world-in-80-days-2004 of Around the World in 80 Days (16 June 2004) Reviews, Three star reviews

Beauty, History, Motivation, Thinking

“To me, there are two different types of musicians. Those who are display oriented and those who are content oriented, Bill Evans being a prime example of the content orientation. I am not interested in the displayers—guys who want to be playing a lot of notes to try to impress you that they got a lot of things that they can lay in there. I'm more interested in somebody picking something that has some really great feeling and laying it in, in a really good time concept. Jimmy Rowles is a perfectly good example of that. His choice of notes may not be uncommon, but boy where he lays them down is so individual that I will go for that every time. The same thing applies with composers. When you're a young composer and you first have a chance—and this goes with everybody—you write your most complex works when you're a young man. And then, as you get a little bit older, you find that you can lot simpler things [sic] and still enjoy the devil out of what you're doing.”

Clare Fischer (1928–2012) American keyboardist, composer, arranger, and bandleader

Radio interview, circa 1985, by Ben Sidran, as quoted in Talking Jazz With Ben Sidran, Volume 1: The Rhythm Section https://books.google.com/books?id=O3hZDQAAQBAJ&pg=PT461&lpg=PT461&dq=%22It+seems+that+today,+particularly+with+younger+piano%22&source=bl&ots=vkOwylFb7q&sig=zPFSLx48xHOhugAAlpcRNKTxUlQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjY_Zay4cbRAhWLKiYKHdVRC3gQ6AEIFDAA#v=onepage&q&f=false (1992, 2006, 2014)

Guy, Feeling, Boy, Chance

“Creation of absolutely the first rank — in philosophy, in music, in much of literature, in mathematics — continues to occur outside the American milieu. It is at once taken up and intelligently exploited, but the "motion of the spirit" has taken place elsewhere, amid the enervation of Europe, in the oppressive climate of Russia. There is, in a good deal of American intellectual, artistic production (recent paining may be a challenging exception) a characteristic near-greatness, a strength just below the best. Could it be that the United States is destined to be the "museum culture?"”

George Steiner (1929–2020) American writer

"Tomorrow".
In Bluebeard's Castle (1971)

Pain, Music, Intelligence, Literature

“Although a poem be not made by counting of syllables upon the fingers, yet "numbers" is the most poetical synonym we have for verse, and "measure" the most significant equivalent for beauty, for goodness, and perhaps even for truth. Those early and profound philosophers, the followers of Pythagoras, saw the essence of all things in number, and it was by weight, measure, and number, as we read in the Bible, that the Creator first brought Nature out of the void.”

George Santayana (1863–1952) 20th-century Spanish-American philosopher associated with Pragmatism

Interpretations of Poetry and Religion (1900), p. 251
Other works

Truth, Beauty, Nature, Reading

Mike Murphy (political consultant) (1962) American political consultant

2010s, 2018, Interview with Bill Kristol (2018)

History, Understanding

“The difference between the Jewish soul, in all its independence, inner desires, longings, character and standing, and the soul of all the Gentiles, on all of their levels, is greater and deeper than the difference between the soul of a man and the soul of an animal, for the difference in the latter case is one of quantity, while the difference in the first case is one of essential quality.”

Abraham Isaac Kook book Orot

Orot Yisrael, Ch. 5, article 10, p. 156; as quoted in "The Distinction between Jews and Gentiles in Torah" by Rabbi David Bar Chaim http://www.daatemet.org.il/articles/article.cfm?article_id=119&lang=en Variant: The dissimilarity between the Jewish soul, in all its independence, inner desires, longings, character and standing vis-à-vis the soul of all the Gentiles — on all of their levels — is greater and deeper than the difference between the soul of a man and the soul of an animal, for the difference in the latter case is one of quantity, while the difference in the first case is one of essential quality As quoted in "A British Synagogue Bans a Famous Hassidic Text!" (February 2010) by Rabbi Michael Leo Samuel http://rabbimichaelsamuel.com/2010/02/2744/#_ftn1. Orot

Soul, Animals

“The differential equation of the first order
\frac {dy}{dx} = f(x, y)
… prescribes the slope \frac {dy}{dx} at each point of the plane (or at each point of a certain region of the plane we call the field")…. a differential equation of the first order… can be conceived intuitively as a problem about the steady flow of a river: Being given the direction of the flow at each point, find the streamlines…. It leaves open the choice between the two possible directions in the line of a given slope. Thus… we should say specifically "direction of an unoriented straight line" and not merely "direction."”

George Pólya (1887–1985) Hungarian mathematician

Mathematical Methods in Science (1977)

Problem

“I confess I have often fancied myself transformed into some other person, and have felt a certian pleasure in seeing myself in my new chracter. One of our first amusements as children (if we have any imagination at all) is to get out of our own characters, and to try the characters of other personages as a change—to be fairies, to be queens, to be anything, in short, but what we really are.”

Wilkie Collins book The Law and the Lady

The Law and the Lady [Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1875] ( p. 195) Also in Gothic Returns in Collins, Dickens, Zola, and Hitchcock by Eleanor Salotto [Springer, 2016, ISBN 1-137-11770-2 https://books.google.com/books?id=qPmE-w86r0AC&pg=PA195 ( p. 39 https://books.google.com/books?id=recYDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA39) The Law and the Lady (1875)

Children, Pleasure, Imagination, Change

“Two forces are emerging that will moot global warming. First, the end of the population explosion will, over the decades, reduce the increases in demand for just about everything. Second, the increase in the cost of both finding and using hydrocarbons will increase the hunger for alternatives.”

George Friedman (1949) American businessman and political scientist

Source: The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century (2009), p. 252

Hunger

“Over time, it’s clear that this culture of enforcement actions being disconnected from the public safety needs of the community – and often to the detriment of community residents – has given rise to a disturbing and unconstitutional pattern or practice. Our investigation showed that Ferguson police officers routinely violate the Fourth Amendment in stopping people without reasonable suspicion, arresting them without probable cause, and using unreasonable force against them. According to the Police Department’s own records, its officers frequently infringe on residents’ First Amendment rights. They interfere with the right to record police activities. And they make enforcement decisions based on the way individuals express themselves.”

Eric Holder (1951) 82nd Attorney General of the United States

2010s, Update on Investigations in Ferguson (2015)

People, Way, Communication, Decision

“The Second Amendment is about protecting your right to go deer hunting the same way that the First Amendment is about protecting your right to publish poetry.”

James Wesley Rawles (1960) Survivalist-fiction author and blogger

Tools For Survival (2009)

Way

“So ends this demonstratiue resolution of all difficulties of the Revelation, first of all dates and times, and last of the principall termes and matters, as to the meaner termes and smaller matters, they are interpreted in the notes of the principall treatise.”

John Napier (1550–1617) Scottish mathematician

A Plaine Discovery of the Whole Revelation of St. John (1593), The First and Introductory Treatise

Time

“I say that conceit is just as natural a thing to human minds as a centre is to a circle. But little-minded people's thoughts move in such small circles that five minutes' conversation gives you an arc long enough to determine their whole curve. An arc in the movement of a large intellect does not sensibly differ from a straight line. Even if it have the third vowel ['I', the first-person pronoun] as its centre, it does not soon betray it. The highest thought, that is, is the most seemingly impersonal; it does not obviously imply any individual centre.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894) Poet, essayist, physician

The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)

People, Nature, Personality

“Our first Salon des Independants, where I think we [Matisse and Marquet] were the only two painters to express ourselves in pure colors, was in 1901.”

Albert Marquet (1875–1947) French artist

Gordon Brown, 'Albert Marquet', Arts Magazine Vol. 46, November 1971, p. 49.

Color, Thinking

“So the temple of Somnath was made to bow towards the Holy Mecca; and as the temple lowered its head and jumped into the sea, you may say that the building first said its prayers and then had a bath… It seemed as if the tongue of the Imperial sword explained the meaning of the text: ‘So he (Abraham) broke them (the idols) into pieces except the chief of them, that haply they may return to it.’ Such a pagan country, the Mecca of the infidels, now became the Medina of Islam. The followers of Abraham now acted as guides in place of the Brahman leaders. The robust-hearted true believers rigorously broke all idols and temples wherever they found them. Owing to the war, ‘takbir,’ and ‘shahadat’ was heard on every side; even the idols by their breaking affirmed the existence of God. In this ancient land of infidelity the call to prayers rose so high that it was heard in Baghdad and Madain (Ctesiphon) while the ‘Ala’ proclamation (Khutba) resounded in the dome of Abraham and over the water of Zamzam… The sword of Islam purified the land as the Sun purifies the earth.”

Amir Khusrow (1253–1325) Indian poet, writer, musician and scholar

About Sultan ‘Alau’d-Din Khalji (AD 1296-1316) and his generals conquests in Somnath (Gujarat) Mohammed Habib's translation quoted by Jagdish Narayan Sarkar, The Art of War in Medieval India, New Delhi, 1964, pp. 286-87.
Khazainu’l-Futuh

God, War, Water, Sun

“As far as Hamilton, the banks and internal improvements, contrary to Professor DiLorenzo, I think, and several other people have thought, that Hamilton was the greatest Secretary of the Treasury we ever had. The assumption of the debts of the states, and the funding of the debt through the bank produced an enormous prosperity in the country, and this was all done under Washington’s administration. And if you want to speak of Federalists and people supporting the Federalist economic agenda, the first one of them was George Washington.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

2000s, The Real Abraham Lincoln: A Debate (2002), Rebuttal

People, Support, Thinking, Country

“People do want to be young and beautiful. When they meet in the street, male or female, if they're getting older they look at each other's face a little ashamed. It's clear they want to say, Excuse me, I didn't mean to draw attention to mortality and gravity all at once. I didn't want to remind you, my dear friend, of our coming eviction, first from liveliness, then from life. To which, most of the time, the friend's eyes will courteously reply, My dear, it's nothing at all. I hardly noticed.”

Grace Paley (1922–2007) American writer and activist

"Friends"

Life, People, Beauty, Time

“Typography as the first mechanization of a handicraft is itself the perfect instance not of a new knowledge, but of applied knowledge.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Source: 1960s, The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962), p. 171

Knowledge, Perfection

“I always turn to the sports section first. The sports section records people's accomplishments; the front page nothing but man's failures.”

Earl Warren (1891–1974) United States federal judge

As quoted in Sports Illustrated (22 July 1968)
Variants:
I always turn to the sports page first, which records people's accomplishments. The front page has nothing but man's failures.
As quoted in Best Sports Stories : 1975 (1976) by Irving T. Marsh
I always turn to the sports pages first, which records people's accomplishments. The front page has nothing but man's failures.
As quoted in The Norton Book of Sports (1992) by George Plimpton, p. 470
1960s

People, Failure, Sport

“The first two lines, which rhymed 'kiddin' you' and 'didn't you,' just about knocked me out, and later on, when I got to the jugglers and the chrome horse and the princess on the steeple, it all just about got to be too much.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Discussing the song "Like a Rolling Stone" in Rolling Stone magazine (1988)

Horse, Princess

“He hails from Snowy River, up by Kosciusko's side,
Where the hills are twice as steep, and twice as rough;
Where the horse's hoofs strike firelight from the flintstones every stride,
The man that holds his own is good enough.
And the Snowy River riders on the mountains make their home,
Where the river runs those giant hills between;
I have seen full many horsemen since I first commenced to roam,
But nowhere yet such horsemen have I seen.”

Andrew Paterson (1877–1948) Scottish photographer

"The Man From Snowy River", the poem which inspired the movies by the same name.

Home, Mountain, Horse

“I managed to become a member of a government cabinet, of the first Bolshevik cabinet in the years 1917/18. I am also the first woman ever to have been appointed ambassadress, a post which I occupied for three years and from which I resigned of my own free will. This may serve to prove that woman certainly can stand above the conventional conditions of the age. The World War, the stormy, revolutionary spirit now prevalent in the world in all areas has greatly contributed to blunting the edge of the unhealthy, overheated double standard of morality. We are already accustomed not to make overly taxing demands, for example, on actresses and women belonging to the free professions in matters relating to their married life. Diplomacy, however, is a caste which more than any other maintains its old customs, usages, traditions, and, above all, its strict ceremonial. The fact that a woman, a "free," a single woman was recognized in this position without opposition shows that the time has come when all human beings will be equally appraised according to their activity and their general human dignity.”

Alexandra Kollontai (1872–1952) Soviet diplomat

The Autobiography of a Sexually Emancipated Communist Woman (1926)

Life, Women, War, Age

“Today, the Panzer-like Bush machine controls all three branches of our federal government, the first time that has happened since Calvin Coolidge was in the White House. And that makes it just about impossible to mount any kind of Congressional investigation of a firmly-entrenched president like George Bush. The time has come to get deeply into football. It is the only thing we have left that ain't fixed.”

Hunter S. Thompson book Hey Rube

"The pain of losing" Hey Rube, HST's ESPN column (9 November 2004) http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=thompson/041109 2000s

Time, Football, Housing

“In 1913, Nobel price Otto Heinrich Warburg was the first to observe that cancer can not develop in a rich stace full of oxygen. Nobel price Roy Walford also observed that caloric restriction, could increase longevity and health.”

Jean-Pierre Willem (1938) French humanitarian

Dès 1913, le prix Nobel Otto Heinrich Warburg fut le premier à observer et expliquer que le cancer ne peut se développer dans un milieu riche en oxygène, donc acide. Le prix Nobel Roy Walford observa également que les restrictions caloriques pouvaient augmenter la longevité et la santé.
Une technique de jeûne annuel: L'ACIDOSE, prévention n°1 des maladies dégénératives, Jean-Pierre Willem (Paris, La vie naturelle, 1990), n°56.

Health

“For some reason I was attracted to civil government and took that. This was my first introduction to the Constitution of the United States. Although I was but thirteen years old the subject interested me exceedingly. The study of it which I then began has never ceased, and the more I study it the more I have come to admire it, realizing that no other document devised by the hand of man ever brought so much progress and happiness to humanity. The good it has wrought can never be measured.”

Calvin Coolidge book The Autobiography of Calvin Coolidge

The Autobiography of Calvin Coolidge, Cosmopolitan Book Corporation (1929), p. 40.
1920s

Happiness, Study

“At the time of Indian independence, I was a student in London and we the students, Indian students, celebrated the moment with great joy. I was exhilarated, no doubt, but the shadow of two events fell upon the jollifications. First, a sense of disappointment that the imperialist objective of dividing India has been achieved. And second, the communal carnage which took place in India cast another shadow on it.”

K. R. Narayanan (1920–2005) 9th Vice President and the 10th President of India

Shri K. R. Narayanan President of India in Conversation with N. Ram on Doordarshan and All India Radio

Disappointment, Communication, Sense, Time

“What can be said for a man who would allow his home to be invaded by strangers who demanded they be fed, clothed, housed and granted the rights of the first-born? What can be said for a ruling elite that permits this to be done to the nation, and who celebrate it as a milestone of moral progress?”

Patrick Buchanan (1938) American politician and commentator

2000s, State of Emergency (2006)

Home, Housing, Clothes

“First, I would like to tell you that I came to carry out the struggle, not to kill people. Even now, and you can look at me, am I savage person? My conscience is clear.”

Pol Pot (1925–1998) former General Secretary of the Communist Party of Kampuchea

Nate Thayer interview (1997)

People, Personality

“For the first time he looked into his heart and wrote, and thus for the first time he touched the hearts of others; the cold style took fire, and beneath the clumsy periods welled tears.”

Evelyn Beatrice Hall book The Friends of Voltaire

Source: The Friends of Voltaire (1906), Ch. 1 : D'Alembert: The Thinker, p. 29

Tear, Time, Heart

“Convinced as I am and as I am from my government that the world needs a new moral architecture over all, I believe that this should be the first topic to debate in our world of today - ethics, and moral…[Capitalism is] an infernal machine that produces every minute an impressive amount of poor, 26 million poor in 10 years are 2.6 million per year of new poor, this is the road, well, the road to hell.”

Hugo Chávez (1954–2013) 48th President of Venezuela

Hugo Chávez http://www.thefinancialexpress-bd.com/index.php?ref=MjBfMDNfMThfMTNfMV8yN18xNjM1MDI= Unknown year

World, Hell

“For the first time people in the south stopped calling for separation, raised the national flag and demanded an end to the regime. It's been truly historic. The country is united in its aim to rid itself of the regime through public vigils and rallies, civil disobedience and slogans instead of tear gas and bullets.”

Tawakkol Karman (1979) Yemeni journalist, politician, human rights activist, and Nobel Peace Prize recipient

2010s, Our revolution's doing what Saleh can't – uniting Yemen (2011)

People, Tear, Time, Country

“…and it's a story that might bore you but you don't have to listen, she told me, because she always knew it was going to be like that, and it was, she thinks, her first year, or actually weekend, really a Friday, in September, at Camden, and this was three or four years ago, and she got so drunk that she ended up in bed, lost her virginity (late, she was eighteen) in Lorna Slavin's room, because she was a Freshman and had a roommate and Lorna was, she remembers, a Senior or Junior and usually somestimes at her boyfriend's place off-campus, to who she thought was a Sophomore Ceramics major but who was actually either some guy from N. Y. U., a film student, and up in New Hampshire just for The Dressed to Get Screwed party, or a townie.”

Bret Easton Ellis The Rules of Attraction

The Rules of Attraction (1987)

Guy, Thinking

“The classical view of dinosaurs presents a perplexing problem. The group of vertebrates which dominated the land before the rise of the dinosaurs were the synapsids, the mammal-like reptiles… Most paleontologists have believed that the locomotion and physiology of these mammal-like synapsids were more similar to those of active, warm-blooded mammals than to sluggish modern lizards or alligators. Surprisingly, though, when the first dinosaurs and their near relatives appeared in the Triassic period, the synapsids began to decline and soon became extinct. The dinosaurs then ruled the land unchallenged for over 100 million years while the early mammals, the surviving descendants of the synapsids, remained very small in size and number. Only after the dinosaurs suddenly disappeared about 70 million years ago did the mammals develop into the great variety of dominant land vertebrates we have today. The problem is this: if the later synapsids were such splendidly advanced animals with the improved physiology of mammals, and if dinosaurs were slow and sluggish, why were the mammal-like synapsids exterminated in competition with the first dinosaurs? And why didn't the mammals achieve a more significant diversification during the dinosaurs' reign?”

Robert T. Bakker (1945) American paleontologist

"The Superiority of Dinosaurs", Discovery 3(2),(1968) 11–22
The Superiority of Dinosaurs (1968)

Problem, Appearance, Animals

“A few years ago, I had the good fortune of running across a first edition of Paul's textbook (not the recent reprint of the original text, but an actual 1948 edition). It was a real find. I bought the volume in an online auction for, if my recollection is correct, $35. Talk about consumer surplus! I would have gladly paid many times that.
At the next Boston Fed meeting, I took the book along to get Paul to sign it. Below is the book's title page, along with Paul's gracious inscription.”

N. Gregory Mankiw (1958) American economist

Greg Mankiw, "Memories of Paul" http://gregmankiw.blogspot.kr/2009/12/memories-of-paul.html (December 15, 2009) 2000s -

Books, Time

“[T]he doctrine of a plurality of Gods is as prominent in the Bible as any other doctrine…. The head God organized the heavens and the earth. I defy all the world to refute me. In the beginning the heads of the Gods organized the heavens and the earth. Now the learned priests and the people rage, and the heathen imagine a vain thing. If we pursue the Hebrew text further, it reads, 'The head one of the Gods said, Let us make a man in our own image.' I once asked a learned Jew, 'If the Hebrew language compels us to render all words ending in heim in the plural, why not render the first Eloheim plural?' He replied, 'That is the rule with few exceptions; but in this case it would ruin the Bible.' He acknowledged I was right…. In the very beginning the Bible shows there is a plurality of Gods beyond the power of refutation. It is a great subject I am dwelling on. The word Eloheim ought to be in the plural all the way through—'Gods'. The heads of the Gods appointed one God for us; and when you take [that] view of the subject, its sets one free to see all the beauty, holiness and perfection of the Gods. All I want is to get the simple, naked truth, and the whole truth.”

Joseph Smith, Jr. book History of the Church

History of the Church, 6:474-76 (7 April 1844)
1840s, King Follett discourse (1844)

God, People, Truth, World

“The recognition by one person of another's personality takes place by means to some extent identical to the means by which he is conscious of his own personality. The idea of the second personality, which is as much as to say that second personality itself, enters within the direct consciousness of the first person, and is immediately perceived as his ego, though less strongly. At the same time, the opposition between the two persons is perceived, so that the externality of the second is perceived.”

Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) American philosopher, logician, mathematician, and scientist

The Law of Mind (1892)

Idea, Time, Personality

“The distinctive thing in the idea for which the pronouns of the first person are names is apparently a characteristic kind of feeliing which may be called the my-feeling or sense of appropriation. Almost any sort of ideas may be associated with this feeling, and so come to be named "I" or "mine," but the feeling, and that alone it would seem, is the determining factor in the matter. As Professor James says in his admirable discussion of the self, the words "me" and "self" designate "all the things which have the power to produce in a stream of consciousness excitement of a certain peculiar sort."”

Charles Cooley (1864–1929) American sociologist

Source: Human Nature and the Social Order, 1902, p. 168-9

Feeling, Idea, Sense, Personality

“It’s terrible. Biblically terrible. Possibly the worst new car money can buy. It’s the first car I’ve ever considered crashing into a tree, on purpose, so I didn’t have to drive it any more.”

Jeremy Clarkson (1960) English broadcaster, journalist and writer

Sunday Times May 17, 2009, reviewing the Honda Insight 1.3 IMA SE Hybrid http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/driving/jeremy_clarkson/article6294116.ece

Money, Cars, Tree

“Don’t wait for a plan to materialize. Don’t expect perfection in your very first try. Just jump In. No idea is too big or small, it’s just the mindset which matters. Life is short, startup now!”

Akshay Agrawal (1998) Serial Social Entrepreneur

Akshay Agarwal, a 16-year-old entrepreneur talks about his crowdfunding platform Ukhadlo.com http://startoholics.in/2014/06/akshay-agarwal-16-year-old-entrepreneur-talks-crowdfunding-platform-ukhadlo-com/

Life, Idea, Waiting, Perfection

“I guess there are some things that are so gross you just have to forget, or it'll destroy something within you. Perl is the first such thing I have known.”

Erik Naggum (1965–2009) Norwegian computer programmer

Re: can lisp do what perl does easily? http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/fc76ebab1cb2f863 (Usenet article). Usenet articles, Perl

Forgetting

“First he gathered what he needed. Then he needed to keep gathering what he used to need.”

James Richardson (1950) American poet

#314
Vectors: Aphorisms and Ten Second Essays (2001)

“The real, the unique misfortune: to see the light of day. A disaster which dates back to aggressiveness, to the seed of expansion and rage within origins, to the tendency to the worst which first shook them up.”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

Light, Rage

“Many of the greatest masters of the mathematical sciences were first attracted to mathematical inquiry by problems relating to numbers, and no one can glance at the periodicals of the present day which contain questions for solution without noticing how singular a charm such problems still continue to exert. The interest in numbers seems implanted in the human mind, and it is a pity that it should not have freer scope in this country. The methods of the theory of numbers 271 are peculiar to itself, and are not readily acquired by a student whose mind has for years been familiarized with the very different treatment which is appropriate to the theory of continuous magnitude; it is therefore extremely desirable that some portion of the theory should be included in the ordinary course of mathematical instruction at our University. From the moment that Gauss, in his wonderful treatise of 1801, laid down the true lines of the theory, it entered upon a new day, and no one is likely to be able to do useful work in any part of the subject who is unacquainted with the principles and conceptions with which he endowed it.”

James Whitbread Lee Glaisher (1848–1928) English mathematician and astronomer

Source: "Presidential Address British Association for the Advancement of Science," 1890, p. 467 : On the theory of numbers

Mathematics, Question, Problem, Universe

“The last peculiarity of consciousness to which attention is to be drawn in this first rough description of its stream is that it is always interested more in one part of its object than in another, and welcomes and rejects, or chooses, all the while it thinks.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

Source: 1890s, The Principles of Psychology (1890), Ch. 9

Thinking, Parting

“In my earlier days I had read the biography of Sri Ramakrishna written by Romain Rolland. I had read the talk which Vivekananda had delivered long ago about "My Master". I had visited Sri Ramakrishna's room at Dakshineshwar. I had also seen a Bengali film on his life. But what brought me into an intimate and living contact with this great mystic and bhakta and shakta and advaitin, was his Kathamrita. He had not used a single abstraction nor discussed any of the problems which pass as philosophy. His talks embodied expressions of a concrete consciousness which had dropped every trace of the dirt and dross and inertia which characterise what is known as normal human consciousness. The metaphors which sprang spontaneously from this purified consciousness were matchless in their aptness and illumined in a few words the knotted problems which many voluminous works had failed to solve. I was now having my first intimations of immortality towards which Kabir and Nanak and Sri Garibdas had inclined me earlier.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

How I became a Hindu (1982)

Life, Problem, Reading

“It was Italian playwright and screenwriter Ennio Flaiano who first spoke to Fellini of Fernando Pessoa during their collaboration on I Vitelloni (1953). Fellini claimed, however, that it was not until he lunched with Anthony Burgess in the mid 1970s (when the British writer owned a country house in Bracciano north of Rome) that he began reading the Portuguese poet in earnest. This is not to suggest that Pessoa influenced Fellini in any direct way but simply to note a genial coincidence embedded within two autobiographical masterpieces. The first quotation is from Pessoa’s O Livro do desassossego: ‘These are my Confessions, and if in them I say nothing, it’s because I have nothing to say.’ The second is from Fellini’s Otto e mezzo (1963) during the crucial night scene at the base of the scaffolding when Guido confesses to Rosella, “I have really nothing to say in my film. But I want to say it anyway.” Suddenly, the disparate obsessions of these two great Mediterranean minds seem to fold into one another, if only for an instant, like the sounds of vibrating wires touched simultaneously. Whatever the ultimate significance may be, it amuses me to think that textual coincidences of this nature are proof of the brotherhood of artists.”

Damian Pettigrew Canadian filmmaker

On Fellini and Fernando Pessoa
Federico Fellini: Sou um Grande Mentiroso (2008)

Way, Nature, Thinking, Reading

“The light from the big window fell right on the picture. I took a good look at it. Then I shifted a bit nearer and took another look. Then I went back to where I had been at first, because it hadn't seemed quite so bad from there.
"Well?" said Corky, anxiously.
I hesitated a bit.
"Of course, old man, I only saw the kid once, and then only for a moment, but -- but it *was* an ugly sort of kid wasn't it, if I remember rightly?"
"As ugly as that?"
I looked again, and honesty compelled me to be frank.
"I don't see how it could have been, old chap."”

P.G. Wodehouse book Carry On, Jeeves

Carry On, Jeeves (1925)

Light

“I still don't look at movies twice. It's funny, I just feel I got it the first time. With music it's different. People respond so differently to the whole issue of seeing a movie many times. I'm astonished when I talk to really good critics, who know their stuff and will see a film eight or ten or twelve times. I don't see how they can do it without hating the movie. I would.”

Pauline Kael (1919–2001) American film critic

"The Perils of Being Pauline," interview with Francis Davis, The New Yorker (October 2001).
Interviews

Hate, People, Music, Feeling

“In many of the cases of conceptual innovation, … creating the conceptual tools is a precondition to coming to a clear understanding of what the problem was in the first place. It is very difficult to describe the transition after it has taken place because it is difficult for us to put ourselves back into the situation of confusion, indeterminacy, and perplexity that existed before the new “tool” brought clarity and this means it is difficult for us to retain a vivid sense of what a difference having the concept made. We can just barely imagine ourselves in a world in which there are no states, as opposed to local barons, warlords, clans, primitive communal forms of village organisation, etc.”

Raymond Geuss book Philosophy and Real Politics

Source: Philosophy and Real Politics (2008), p. 48.

World, Imagination, Communication, Understanding

“…absolute time would exist in a causal structure for which the concept indeterminate as to time order lends to a unique simultaneity, i. e., for which there is no finite interval of time between the departure and return of a first-signal…”

Hans Reichenbach (1891–1953) American philosopher

The Philosophy of Space and Time (1928, tr. 1957)

Departure, Time

“If "socialism" is defined as "ownership of the means of production"--and this is both the orthodox and the only rigorous definition--then the United States is the first truly Socialist country.”

Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

The Pension Fund Revolution (1976)
1960s - 1980s

Country

“I have been working in the area of solid state chemistry for nearly four decades. When I first got seriously interested in the subject in the early 1950s it was still in in infancy. Very few chemists, let alone others, recognized solid state chemistry as an integral part of the main-stream chemistry. In spite of such benign tolerance, solid state chemistry has gradually emerged to become a crucial component of modern solid state and material science.”

C. N. R. Rao (1934) Indian chemist

[R. A. Mashelkar, Solid State Chemistry: Selected Papers of C N R Rao, http://books.google.com/books?id=8ZSfo_HUk7oC&pg=PA4, 28 February 1995, World Scientific, 978-981-279-589-2, 4]

Science, Parting

“Management’s job. It is management’s job to direct the efforts of all components toward the aim of the system. The first step is clarification: everyone in the organization must understand the aim of the system, and how to direct his efforts toward it. Everyone must understand the damage and loss to the whole organization from a team that seeks to become a selfish, independent, profit centre.”

W. Edwards Deming (1900–1993) American professor, author, and consultant

The New Economics for Industry, Government, Education (1993)

Understanding, Effort, Loss, Selfishness

“The first time Return of the Jedi was released I felt it did not have that much impact and the part of Oola seemed quite insignificant to the film although after saying that it was the opposite because her setting the scene up for Princess Leia. But the second time, I still can't believe the popularity the impact it has had on society, plus not just our generation but all the people that have been born since the beginning of Star Wars up until now.”

Femi Taylor British writer

Q&A with Femi Taylor http://www.lucasfan.com/interviews/femitaylor.html (January 2, 1999)

War, People, Star, Time

“Once again, my family and I find ourselves being assaulted by the obscenity that is Mumia Abu-Jamal. On Sunday October 5th, my husband's killer will once again air his voice from what masquerades as a prison, and spew his thoughts and ideas at another college commencement. Mumia Abu-Jamal will be heard and honored as a victim and a hero by a pack of adolescent sycophants at Goddard College in Vermont. Despite the fact that 33 years ago, he loaded his gun with special high-velocity ammunition designed to kill in the most devastating fashion, then used that gun to rip my husband's freedom from him--today, Mumia Abu-Jamal will be lauded as a freedom fighter. Undoubtedly the administrators at Goddard who first accepted, then enthusiastically supported Abu-Jamal as their speaker will be moved by his "important message" when, if one distills that message to its basic meaning, it amounts to nothing more than the same worn out hatred for this country and everyone in law enforcement that Mumia Abu-Jamal has harbored his entire life. Many at Goddard College have said that this is a matter of Abu-Jamal's First Amendment right to speak and be heard. What a convenient way to dodge their responsibility to take a moral position on this situation. This is not a matter of First Amendment rights -- it's a matter of right and wrong. Across the country, people have been voicing their disgust with the wrong that the college is about to commit by allowing a convicted cop-killer to speak to them. Is this the message to be heard? How could they allow him to speak when Danny no longer has a voice? It is my opinion that all murderers should forfeit their right to free speech when they take the life of an innocent person. I have repeatedly seen college administrators deny conservative and religious speakers access to their campuses when even the tiniest minority feel their message is in some way offensive. What could be more offensive than having a person who violently took the life of another imparting his "unique perspective" on your students? Let's be honest. The instructors, administrators and graduates at Goddard College embrace having this killer as their commencement speaker not despite the fact that he brutally murdered a cop, but because he brutally murdered a cop. Otherwise, like so many other speakers that have been denied access to college campuses across the country, Goddard's administration would have lived up to their moral responsibility and pulled the plug on this travesty long ago. Shame on Goddard College and all associated with that school for choosing to honor an arrogant remorseless killer as their commencement speaker. Unfortunately, this is something that I am certain they will be proud of for the rest of their lives.”

Mumia Abu-Jamal (1954) Prisoner, Journalist, Broadcaster, Author, Activist

Statement http://6abc.com/news/mumia-abu-jamal-speech-met-with-vigil-for-slain-officer/337357/ by Maureen Faulkner, widow of Daniel Faulkner, upon Abu-Jamal's delivering the Commencement Address at Goddard College in 2014 About

Life, People, School, Family

“Let your love flow out on all living things. These words at some level have the quality of a strapping homily. Nonetheless, they are remarkably beautiful, strung together in their honest lump-like English syllables… Let your love flow out on all living things.
But there are a couple of problems with this precept of mine. The first is, of course, that it is not mine. It springs from the universe and is the property of God, and the words have been intercepted — on the wing, so to speak — by such mediators as Lao-tzu, Jesus, Gautama Buddha and thousands upon thousands of lesser prophets, including your narrator, who heard the terrible truth of their drumming somewhere between Baltimore and Wilmington and set them down with the fury of a madman sculpting in stone.”

William Styron book Sophie's Choice

Source: Sophie's Choice (1979), Ch. 16; the italicized words being quotes of the song "Let Your Love Flow" by Larry E. Williams, as sung by The Bellamy Brothers

Love, God, Truth, Beauty

“Love does not always choose the same dwelling place, it makes many exploits in men here below; It has its night, its day, and its many levels: only the one who has overall happiness is content. It moves, it suffers in God, its first cause and the unique happiness of the celestial Spirits; It is there that it is always equally enraptured, by the Seraphic love which is above all things.”

John of St. Samson (1571–1636)

From The Holy Sepulchre Canticle

Love, Men, God, Happiness

“6 A wall is called isodomum when all the courses are of equal height; pseudisodomum, when the rows of courses do not match but run unequally. Both kinds are strong: first, because the rubble itself is of close texture and solid, unable to suck the moisture out of the mortar, but keeping it in its moist condition for a very long period; secondly, because the beds of the stones, being laid smooth and level to begin with, keep the mortar from falling, and, as they are bonded throughout the entire thickness of the wall, they hold together for a very long period.”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book II, Chapter VIII, Sec. 6

Strong

“But at some point, you know that— you know what poem keeps going through my mind is, "first they came for the Jews." People, all of us, are like, "Well, this news doesn't really affect me." "Well, I'm not a bondholder." "Well, I'm not in the banking industry." "Well, I'm not a big CEO." "Well, I'm not on Wall Street." "Well, I'm not a car dealer." "I'm not an auto worker."”

Glenn Beck (1964) U.S. talk radio and television host

Gang, at some point, they're going to come for you!
The Glenn Beck Program
Premiere Radio Networks
2009-06-10
Beck compares car dealership closures to Nazis; warns "Gang, at some point, they're going to come for you"
Media Matters for America
2009-06-10
http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/200906100012
2000s, 2009

People, Cars

“Sundance was bullshit. Originally Sundance, Sundance maybe in its first few years, I wasn’t there but I went to Sundance for 10 years and it was a vassal of the majors. It was a vassal. Sundance was there to help Miramax and Fox Searchlight. That’s what was independent at Sundance.”

Lloyd Kaufman (1945) American film director

CraveOnline http://www.craveonline.com/film/articles/507781-exclusive-cannes-interview-lloyd-kaufman-on-nuke-em-high May 28, 2013 2013

Help

“In America, the first generation out of slavery invented jazz music. It is a free-form expression. It comes from the soul and it is true.”

Donald Miller book Blue Like Jazz: nonreligious thoughts on Christian spirituality

Blue Like Jazz (2003, Nelson Books)

Music, Soul

““We’re going to have a séance. Oren, open the whisky, if you would, and pour each of us a full glass.”
“First sensible remark all night,” said Charlotte.”

Tim Powers book Three Days to Never

Source: Three Days to Never (2006), Chapter 24 (p. 339)

Night

“All the revision in the world will not save a bad first draft: for the architecture of the thing comes, or fails to come, in the first conception, and revision only affects the detail and ornament, alas!”

T. E. Lawrence (1888–1935) British archaeologist, military officer, and diplomat

Letter to Bruce Rogers (20 August 1931)

World

“Those who attended [the annual meeting] last year saw your Chairman pitch to Ernie Banks. This encounter proved to be the titanic duel that the sports world had long awaited. After the first few pitches — which were not my best, but when have I ever thrown my best? — I fired a brushback at Ernie just to let him know who was in command. Ernie charged the mound, and I charged the plate. But a clash was avoided because we became exhausted before reaching each other.”

Warren Buffett (1930) American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

1999 Chairman's Letter http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/final1999pdf.pdf Letters to Shareholders (1957 - 2012)

World, Sport

“[.. feel interested in] Things that are not overworked, that are in essence light. In other words, the great Cezannes that are not all filled in.... while I can recognize a master piece that is heavily painted or darkly painted or painted in layers as great and sublime, it would not be my choice to hang a - [inaudible] - for five years if I could instead perhaps have a Cezanne of the kind I just described. Or a certain kind of Matisse. Or one of those large Rubens sketches, where the first breath of feeling is the picture, rather than the labor and the gift.”

Helen Frankenthaler (1928–2011) American artist

quote about 'light' paintings
1960s, Interview with Barbara Rose', Archives - American Art, 1968

Feeling, Light, Painting

“I think the first duty of society is justice.”

Wendell Phillips (1811–1884) American abolitionist, advocate for Native Americans, orator and lawyer

Disunion (21 January 1861).
1860s

Justice, Thinking

“I did terrible little plays in New York that we put up ourselves. My first movie was this independent that I did on the Erie Canal in 1995, called Erie, that I don't know if you could even get, actually with Felicity Huffman. And then from that I did this film that was eventually called The Broken Giant later that fall. And then I kind of started getting into doing pilots.”

Will Arnett (1970) Canadian actor

"The Will Arnett Interview," Television Without Pity (2005) http://www.televisionwithoutpity.com/articles/content/a1005/index-3.html 2005

“Moral education is not mere drill in the ways of the herd. The good man's first duty, as Professor Erskine says, is to be intelligent. Good intentions alone do not enable man to judge wisely or behave well. The prevailing idea that one can be at the same time good and stupid has strongly influenced our education.”

Everett Dean Martin (1880–1941)

Source: The Meaning of a Liberal Education (1926), p. 180

Stupidity, Education, Way, Intelligence

“And my father and mother strengthened me in this my first impression, saying in my presence, I was intended for some great purpose, which they had always thought from certain marks on my head and breast.”

Nat Turner (1800–1831) American slave rebellion leader

The Confessions of Nat Turner (1831)

“Standing outside a factory farm, the first question that comes to mind is not a moral but a practical one: Where is everybody? Where are the owners, the farmers, the livestock managers, the extra hands, anybody? I have been driving around the North Carolina countryside on a Thursday afternoon in January 2001, pulling in at random to six hog farms, and have yet to find a single farmer or any other living soul. … There are so many factory farms around here that they are easy to miss. I doubt that the average visitor just passing through even knows what they are …”

Matthew Scully (1959) American political writer and speechwriter

Dominion (2002)

Soul, Question

“I believe,” said the first lady, “that our souls are in our hands. For we do everything to the world with our hands. Sometimes I think we don’t use our hands half enough; it’s certain we don’t use our heads.”

Ray Bradbury book The Golden Apples of the Sun

Embroidery (1951)
The Golden Apples of the Sun (1953)

World, Soul, Thinking

“The idea for [his sculpture] 'The Warrior' came to me at the end of 1952 or very early in 1953. It was evolved from a pebble I found on the seashore in the summer of 1952, and which reminded me of the stump of a leg, amputated at the hip. Just as Leonardo says somewhere in his notebooks that a painter can find a battle scene in the lichen marks on a wall, so this gave me the start of The Warrior idea. First I added the body, leg and one arm and it became a wounded warrior, but at first the figure was reclining. A day or two later I added a shield and altered its position and arrangement into a seated figure and so it changed from an inactive pose into a figure which, though wounded, is still defiant... The head has a blunted and bull-like power but also a sort of dumb animal acceptance and forbearance of pain... The figure may be emotionally connected (as one critic has suggested) with one’s feelings and thoughts about England during the crucial and early part of the last war. The position of the shield and its angle gives protection from above. The distance of the shield from the body and the rectangular shape of the space enclosed between the inside surface of the shield and the concave front of the body is important... This sculpture is the first single and separate male figure that I have done in sculpture and carrying it out in its final large scale was almost like the discovery of a new subject matter; the bony, edgy, tense forms were a great excitement to make... Like the bronze 'Draped Reclining Figure' of 1952-3 I think 'The Warrior' has some Greek influence, not consciously wished…”

Henry Moore (1898–1986) English artist

Quote from Moore's letter, (15 Jan. 1955); as cited in Henry Moore on Sculpture: a Collection of the Sculptor's Writings and Spoken Words, ed. Philip James, MacDonald, London 1966, p. 250
1940 - 1955

Pain, War, Feeling, Idea

“As the corporation's size and power grew, so did the need to assuage people's fears of it. The corporation suffered its first full-blown legitimacy crisis in the wake of the early-twentieth-century merger movement, when, for the first time, many Americans realized that corporations, now turned behemoths, threatened to overwhelm their social institutions and governments.”

Joel Bakan (1959) Canadian writer, musician, filmmaker and legal scholar

Source: The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power (2004), Chapter 1, The Corporation's Rise To Dominance, p. 17

People, Fear, Suffering, Time

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Quotes about first
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